By: Harper Lee

To Kill A Mockingbird

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

-Harper Lee

Harper Lee

Born April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama-Sleepy, small town similar to Maycomb

Her father was a lawyer similar to Scout’s fatherHOWEVER Lee states that the novel was NOT

intended to portray her own childhood, but rather a nonspecific Southern town

“People are people anywhere you put them”-Lee in a 1961 interview

She finished writing the novel in 1960 (just before the peak of the American Civil

Rights movement)

In 1961, Lee won the Pulitzer Prize for TKAM and sold over 15 million copies

TKAM remains Lee’s sole published novel

The setting of the novel is during the Great Depression era of the 1930s

Southern states of the 1930s and 1940s were strongly influence by their history of

slavery which officially ended with the American Civil War in 1865

The past is still strongly in the minds of the characters, and the moral and social issues with which the novel is concerned are those which were fought over in the

Civil War

Scapegoats-African American’s the cause for the Great

Depression

Influences -Pre-Civil Rights Movement Era-Scottsboro Trial of the 1930s

Deep South

UnemploymentHomelessness Crime rate rose

Suicide rate roseAlcoholism increased

IllnessHigher education was out of reach

“Poor man’s divorce”

Effects of the Great Depression

9 African American men were falsely charged with raping two white women in Alabama

Supreme Court overturned the convictions (Powell v. Alabama)- had not received adequate legal counsel

All together the men were tried four different times and the last time sentenced to 75 years in prison

They served 6 years before being released

The Scottsboro Case

Characterso Descriptions

o Motiveso Conflicts

Setting

Figurative Language (Sensory Language)

Broader Themes

What to take notes on when reading…